Local topological properties of asymptotic cones of groups Greg Conner and Curt Kent October 8, 2018 Abstract We define a local analogue to Gromov’s loop division property which is use to give a sufficient condition for an asymptotic cone of a complete geodesic metric space to have uncountable fundamental group. As well, this property is used to understand the local topological structure of asymptotic cones of many groups currently in the literature. Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Definitions...................................... 3 2 Coarse Loop Division Property 5 2.1 Absolutely non-divisible sequences . .......... 10 2.2 Simplyconnectedcones . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 11 3 Examples 15 3.1 An example of a group with locally simply connected cones which is not simply connected ........................................ 17 1 Introduction Gromov [14, Section 5.F] was first to notice a connection between the homotopic properties of asymptotic cones of a finitely generated group and algorithmic properties of the group: if arXiv:1210.4411v1 [math.GR] 16 Oct 2012 all asymptotic cones of a finitely generated group are simply connected, then the group is finitely presented, its Dehn function is bounded by a polynomial (hence its word problem is in NP) and its isodiametric function is linear. A version of that result for higher homotopy groups was proved by Riley [25]. The converse statement does not hold: there are finitely presented groups with non-simply connected asymptotic cones and polynomial Dehn functions [1], [26], and even with polynomial Dehn functions and linear isodiametric functions [21]. A partial converse statement was proved by Papasoglu [23]: a group with quadratic Dehn function has all asymptotic cones simply connected (for groups with subquadratic Dehn functions, i.e. hyperbolic groups, the statement was previously proved by Gromov [13]: all asymptotic cones in that case are R-trees). An example of Thomas and Velickovic [28] shows that for a finitely generated group one asymptotic cone can be a tree (and hence simply connected) while another asymptotic cone may have non-trivial π1. In Section 3, we show how to modify Thomas and Velickovic’s example to obtain a finitely generated group with one asymptotic cone which is an R-tree and one asymptotic cone which is not locally simply connected. Thus finitely generated groups can have asymptotic cones which are not locally bi-Lipschitz. 1 If a group is finitely presented and one asymptotic cone is an R-tree, then the group is hyper- bolic, so all asymptotic cones are simply connected (it essentially follows from Gromov’s version of the Cartan-Hadamard theorem for hyperbolic groups, see the appendix of [20]). Nevertheless in [22], a finitely presented group (a multiple HNN extension of a free group) having both simply connected and non-simply connected asymptotic cones was constructed. In [14], Gromov defined a loop division property and outlined a proof that a metric space has the loop division property if and only if all of its asymptotic cones are simply connected. Papasoglu presented a proof of the only if direction in [23]. Drut¸u gave a proof of the if direction in [7]. A version of the loop division property which guarantees that a particular asymptotic cone is simply connected was presented and used by Olshanskii and Sapir in [22]. Here we will define an analogue Gromov’s loop division property which we will use to understand the local topological structure of asymptotic cones. In Section 2, we recall some of the definitions and consequences of Gromov’s loop division property as studied by Papasoglu and define a local version which we call ǫ-coarsely loop divisible. The coarsely loop divisible property depends on a scaling sequence and an ultrafilter. We prove that a space is ǫ-coarsely loop divisible with respect to a pair (ω, d if and only if all sufficiently short loops in Conω X, e, d can be partitioned into strictly shorter loops. We say that a space is uniformly ǫ-coarsely divisible if the number of piece required to partition small loops in Conω X, e, d is uniformly bounded independent of the chosen loop. Theorem A (Proposition 2.9, Proposition 2.14, Proposition 2.29). Let G be a finitely generated group and fix a pair ω, d . 1) If G is uniformly ǫ-coarsely loop divisible, then Conω G, d is uniformly locally simply con- nected and G has an asymptotic cone which is simply connected. 2) If Conω G, d is semi-locally simply connected, then G is ǫ-coarsely loop divisible. Papasoglu (see Proposition 2.7) showed that if one requires G to be uniformly ǫ-coarsely loop divisible with respect to ω, d for every ǫ> 0, then one obtains that Conω G, d is actually simply connected. However; it is not clear if uniformly coarsely divisible is actually a necessary condition. Hence, the following questions are open. Let G be a finitely generated group. Question 1. If Conω G, d is locally simply connected, is G uniformly ǫ-coarsely loop divisible? Question 2. If Conω G, d is simply connected, is G uniformly ǫ-coarsely loop divisible for every ǫ? Remark 2.11 gives examples of metric spaces which are not asymptotic cones where the answer to both of these question is no. There are no known examples of finitely generated groups which are coarsely loop divisible but not uniformly coarsely loop divisible which leaves the following question open. Question 3. Are uniformly coarsely loop divisible and coarsely loop divisible equivalent condi- tions for finitely generated groups? A positive answer to Question 3 would imply a positive answer to Question 1 and show that for finitely generated groups locally simply connected and semi-locally simply connected are equivalent properties. Coarse loop divisibly also allows us to understand some general algebraic properties of the fundamental group of an asymptotic cone. 2 Theorem B (Theorem 2.15, Theorem 2.17, Proposition 2.20). If a finitely generated G is not ǫ- coarsely divisible with respect to ω, d for every ǫ> 0, then the fundamental group of Conω G, d is uncountable, not free, and not simple. These theorems hold for all complete homogenous geodesic metric spaces. In Section 2.1, we give a necessary condition for every asymptotic cone of a complete homogenous geodesic metric space to satisfy the hypothesis of Theorem B. It turns out that many important groups such as SL3(Z) and other groups that have previously appeared in the literature related to asymptotic cones satisfy this condition, see Section 3. 1.1 Definitions Let G = S be a group and u, v be two words in the alphabet S. We write u v when u and v h i ≡ coincide letter by letter and u =G v if u and v are equal in G. We will denote the Cayley graph of G with respect to the generating set S by Γ(G, S). We will use Lab to represent the function from the set of edge paths in a labeled oriented CW complex to the set of words in the alphabet obtained by reading the label of a path. Isoperimetric functions: Suppose that S R is a finite presentation for a group G. h | i Let Area(∆) denote the number of R-cells in a van Kampen diagram ∆. If w is a word in S S 1, then Area(w) = min Area(∆) Lab (∂∆) w . If γ is a loop in Γ(G, S), then ∪ − { | ≡ } Area(γ) = Area(Lab (γ)). An isoperimetric function for the presentation S R of G is a non-decreasing function h | i δ : N [0, ) such that δ( ∂∆ ) Area(Lab (∂∆)) for all van Kampen diagrams ∆ over → ∞ | | ≥ S R . A minimal isoperimetric function of a group is called a Dehn function for G. h | i Two non-decreasing functions f, g : N [0, ) are equivalent, if there exists constants → ∞ B,C > 0 such that f(n) Bg(Bn+B)+Bn+B Cf(Cn+C)+Cn+C. Up to this equivalence, ≤ ≤ the Dehn function of a finitely presented group is independent of the finite presentation. Definition 1.1 (Asymptotic cones). Let ω be an ultrafilter on N and cn be a sequence of positive real numbers. The sequence cn is bounded ω-almost surely or ω-bounded, if there exists a number M such that ω n c < M = 1. If c is ω-bounded, then there exists a unique number, { | n } n which we will denote by limω c , such that ω n c limωc <ǫ = 1 for every ǫ> 0. n { | | n − n| } If c is not ω-bounded, then ω n c > M = 1 for every M. We will say that c diverges n { | n } n ω-almost surely or is ω-divergent and let limω c = . n ∞ Let (X, dist) be a metric space. Let ω be an ultrafilter on N. Consider an ω-divergent sequence of numbers d = (dn) called a scaling sequence and a sequence of points e = (en) in X called an observation sequence. ω dist(xn,yn) Given two sequences x = (xn),y = (yn) in X, set dist(x,y) = lim . We can then dn define an equivalence relation on the set of sequence in X by x y if and only if dist(x,y) = 0. ∼ ∼ The asymptotic cone of X with respect to e, d, and ω is Conω X, e, d = x = (x ) dist(x, e) < / . { n | ∞} ∼ Conω X, e, d is a complete metric space. If X is geodesic, then Conω X, e, d is also geodesic. ω If Xn is a sequence of subspaces of X, we will use lim Xn to denote the subspace of ω Con X, e, d consisting of sequences with representatives in Xn.